The Crawling Woman

I was a college student from the Midwest. During my senior year, I decided to study abroad in Japan, thinking, why not have a better college experience living somewhere else? After booking a ticket and packing my bags, I was off for approximately four months. Everything went smoothly on the plane ride there, I made many friends with people from all over the world and I felt surprisingly at home. For the first couple of weeks, everything was ok. However, that all changed one night.

It was about 2 o’clock in the morning, when I woke up. My room temperature was surprisingly cold, even though I had previously set it at twenty five degrees. Thirst was building up in my mouth, crying to me to get a drink. I made my way to the fridge in my room, when my eyes caught a glimpse of a figure, illuminated by a nearby streetlamp, standing outside. She wore what appeared to be a tattered rag and her long black hair covered her face. Confusion swept across my face and I wondered to myself whether she was lost. I opened my window and called down to her whether she needed help. The woman gave no response to me, instead, remained completely still. I called out a little louder, not to the point of waking up my dorm mates, but enough to draw her attention. The woman still didn’t move. At this point, I didn’t know what to do, whether I should I call the police, or maybe she was fine. After a few minutes of staring at her, the woman disappeared. I was completely taken aback and went back to bed, the memory disappearing from my mind.

The next day, I woke up for my Japanese language class. Last night’s memory didn’t cross my mind at first, until I saw the streetlamp outside my window. While making breakfast, I asked one of my friends whether he happened to see a strange woman standing outside. He said no and I was dumbfounded. I explained to him what happened the night before and he shrugged his shoulders, saying that I must have had some sort of sleep-induced hallucination that I had. With no other explanation, I had no other choice but to believe him. On the way to my class, I passed by the streetlamp the woman stood by. She couldn’t have just disappeared, right? I thought. Maybe what I saw last night was a hallucination. However, it all felt so real to me. The entire day, I didn’t pay much attention to any of my classes, instead, focusing on the woman standing outside. Why was she there? I wondered. Could she have needed help? When I got back to my dorm, I decided to close my curtains to block out any light from the outside world. Later that night, it happened again.

That night, I had a nightmare. In this dream, I was walking towards my room at night by myself. As I neared my dorm, I saw her. The woman standing by the streetlamp. I felt chills run down my spine, as my mouth went dry. The woman inched her way closer until she was at arm’s length. She then opened her mouth twice as wide as humanly possible and let out a guttural, blood-curdling scream that rattled me to the core. I woke in a cold sweat and stared at my clock. 1:30 A.M. I sighed and relaxed before having the sudden urge to go pee. As I came back from the bathroom, I saw a bright light coming from my closed curtain. I was about to ignore it, but for some reason, I was entranced to open the window and look outside.

As I parted the curtains, I saw the woman again. This time, she appeared to have inched closer, to the point where she wasn’t standing directly under the streetlamp anymore. However, the woman remained standing still, her hair covering her face. I was a bit annoyed and I called out that if she didn’t leave in the next five minutes, I would call the police. She didn’t budge. Frustrated, I grab the phone on my night table and dialed the police. I reported a strange woman standing outside my room. The lady on the phone told me that an officer would be there soon. After I phoned the police, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the woman was gone. Twenty minutes later, an officer pulled up by the campus and a brief investigation was done. The entire campus was woken up and the cops found nothing. My dorm mates were angry at me and for a good reason. I had just woken everyone up at the dead of night because I was scared of a strange woman. After the ordeal, everyone went back to sleep and I put the thought of the woman behind me.

I woke up in a tired haze the next day. My head pounded from the lack of sleep last night. Groggily, I glanced at my phone and realized that I overslept. I hastily made my way to class, to the annoyance of my professor. It had just dawned on me that there was a quiz in my class and I had not studied for it. I couldn’t concentrate at all and flunked the quiz. The rest of the day, I felt a mix of confusion and fear. How can that woman be outside my room one moment and disappear the next without me noticing? I had been standing next to my window when I made the call, in fact, I only glanced away for just a second. How could she have ran off in that short time? Nothing made sense, and I decided to shrug it off for the rest of the day.

Later that night, my room once again became cold as ice. My breath came out in a fog and I immediately felt a feeling of intense dread sink into me. Something, I don’t know what, urged me to looking outside my window. Using all my willpower, I managed to resist the urge to do so. However, just as I was turning the temperature back down, I heard a loud scraping noise. Fear engulfed me as my brain was filled with horrible thoughts. Slowly, I tread towards the window and drew back the curtain. To my horror, I saw her. The woman outside my room, crawling up the building.

Credit : Rural Guy Horror